Kerryann Martin started K&M Cleaning Services in 2014 for a very practical reason. Her son was months old. Her daughter was in nursery. She needed work that she could do on her own terms, around school hours, without having to answer to anyone else.
"Oh, how that changed very quickly."
Twelve years later, K&M Cleaning Services has 30 members of staff and offers a service list that includes domestic cleaning, deep cleans, tenancy cleans, commercial contracts, carpet and upholstery cleaning, laundry, and biohazard cleaning. The goal she set at the start — a business that runs without her, one that provides jobs for the local community — is still ahead of her. But she's getting there.
In this episode of Scale HER Up, she talks about what it actually takes.
How it grew
The domestic cleaning was the plan. The rest, at first, was not.
"These opportunities came, and we just grabbed them with both hands."
When the first commercial contracts arrived, Kerryann knew how to clean. She had no doubt about that. But the business mechanics of contracts — the quotes, the terms, the scale of it all — that was new.
"I had no idea. I was just winging it."
She took it on anyway. And then, after that, the expansion became more deliberate. Commercial cleaning first. Then the decision to push into biohazard cleaning, laundry, carpet and upholstery cleaning. The most recent expansion happened not in small doses but all at once.
"I never done it in small doses either. I don't know what I was thinking."
It's a pattern worth noting. Kerryann describes herself as someone who took small risks comfortably for years and then, in the last year or two, crossed into a different kind of risk-taking. Bigger equipment costs. New service lines. More people. She didn't wait until she was certain. She went.
"If you don't change the way you do things, you're just gonna keep staying where you are."
The goalpost problem
Ask Kerryann about the highlights and she gives you a list. The first commercial client. The office. The vans. The staff. The awards.
Then she pauses.
"When I first started, if I ever got a commercial customer, how ecstatic I would be. And then when I got that, it didn't feel as good as I thought it would have, so I needed more."
The office didn't do what she thought it would. The van didn't either. The staff. The contracts. She describes it plainly: the goalpost keeps moving. She gets close and then takes another risk that involves more work from her and puts the finish line further away again.
She knows this about herself. She calls herself her own worst enemy — and then says she's got hungry for it.
It's a version of something that comes up in a lot of conversations on this show. The goal of a business that runs without you is a real one. But the drive that gets you there tends to keep generating new goals. You don't stop needing the next thing just because you've got the last thing.
What she's learned
Patience. That's what Kerryann says when Brenda asks what she's learned about herself.
"I just, the patience has definitely come in with time."
The other thing — and she's direct about this — is learning not to take it personally when staff leave. In the early days, if someone left, she assumed it was something she'd done, or hadn't done, or failed to provide. Now she understands that it's just a job, and people move on, and that's not a story about her.
"I've got less offended with people making their own personal choices."
That's a harder lesson than it sounds. When you've built something from nothing, when you've provided those jobs personally, when you've invested in people — it can feel like a comment on you when someone leaves. The shift from taking it personally to reading it clearly is a real one.
On the business knowledge side, she learned from everywhere: courses, networks, asking questions of people who were further along, ChatGPT. And she says something important about the asking-questions part. Early on, she wouldn't have dreamed of approaching someone more successful.
"I wouldnae want to even speak to them because they're too up here for me."
Now she asks. And the answer she gets, almost every time, is that people want to help.
The support behind it
Kerryann's biggest supporter is her husband, Jim Martin. On the days when it feels like it's not worth it — and she's honest that those days come — he's the one who reminds her why she's doing it.
"He'll pick me back up again and reminds me why we're doing this in the first place."
She's also built a network of external support over the years. Growth Nation, BNI, and coaches — Faye Mack and Strategy One — all contributed at different points. One person explains something in the right way and something that felt impossible turns out to be manageable.
Don't get lost in the detail
Kerryann's advice to women thinking about starting a business is consistent throughout the conversation.
Don't wait until you know everything. You never will. Don't sit down and think about everything that's involved in starting a business, because you'll talk yourself out of it before you've done anything.
Start with what you need to do right now to get up and running. Learn the rest as you go.
"As long as you're doing better than what you were doing yesterday, that's all that matters."
She'd say the same to her 18-year-old self. Not to know more — just to set a goal and make a plan. To know what she wanted and go after it. She drums the same message into her own kids.
"If you want something, go get it. Make sure it happens."
About Kerryann Martin
Kerryann Martin is the owner and managing director of K&M Cleaning Services Limited, which she founded in 2014. The business offers domestic cleaning, deep cleans, tenancy cleaning, commercial contracts, carpet and upholstery cleaning, laundry, and biohazard cleaning, and has a team of 30 staff.
